Shelf 49: The Martian

Loved it. Loved every second of it.

It's funny. It's sci-fi with good explanations where you get enough detail to believe that what he's doing is actually feasible in real life but it's not so technical that you just give up and put down the book because you didn't ask for a calculus lesson, damn it.

I haven't seen the movie yet. I badly wanted to read the book first, and I'm glad I did, because it was an excellent book. I read the vast majority of it in one day.

[Photo forthcoming... I returned the book before taking a photo of it with its shelf sign, so I have to wait until it gets reshelved.]

Shelf 38: Are you my mother?

Today, I finished reading Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel, which belongs to Shelf 38.

Shelf 38 is the only shelf in this collection that contains graphic novels, so this is the only graphic novel I'll read this year that counts toward the 70 shelves.

I remember liking Fun Home. Not loving it, but liking it. And I thought this would be more of that, but focused on Bechdel's mother. No. Not unless I'm grievously misremembering Fun Home. There's a list of books that Bechdel refers to, and it feels more like reading an academic paper with all the citations and references, mostly to Virginia Woolf and a bunch of psychoanalysts.

Which brings me to the other problem with the book. You know that friend you have (everyone has one) whose beliefs/interests/worldviews just don't mesh with your own, whether they do the homeopathy thing, or thing organic foods are inherently better than non-organic foods, or they follow a "fringe" religion? Reading this book is like reading a book that friend wrote about that one weird topic you don't follow with them. I don't prescribe to psychoanalysis or dream interpretation or any of that, but I do believe that it can work on the people who do, because, for example, they've read "The number 18 represents life because..." so then if they dream about the number 18, it could have that association for them.

At any rate, I'm glad I finished the book, and I'm disappointed that I didn't pick up the X-Men book instead.

Shelf 16: The umbrella unfurled: its remarkable life and times

Next up, I read The Umbrella Unfurled: Its Remarkable Life and Times by Nigel Rogers, as my selection from Shelf 16. It weighs in at 96 pages.

I had originally chosen a SEAL's survival guide, but then this book came across my desk as a selection for a display of blue books. (The display theme is "pick a book out of the blue" and so I did just that!)

It's an unusual little book, but it delivers exactly what it promises: the history of the umbrella. It discusses the umbrella's importance as a social status indicator, a protector from the rain and sun, how it played into flirtation, and even its place on the battlefield.

Something I learned from this book is that, in 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy (president of France) got a Kevlar-lined umbrella that would cover him from head to toe (in one direction, at least) in the event of an assassination attempt or other such attack.

Shelf 33: Letterscapes: A Global Survey of Typographic Installations

My first selection was from Shelf 33, and is titled Letterscapes: A Global Survey of Typographic Installations. It has 351 pages (many of which are photos and drawings, I admit) and I read it in three sessions over six days.

I really enjoyed it. It features many different works of public art composed of typography, most of which are in the western alphabet (though there was one in a Korean script, one in enormous Braille, and a few other exceptions). There is a summary that accompanies each piece, and at the end of the book there are a number of interviews with the artists about their works that were featured in the book.

An unexpected fact I learned from this book is the origin of the name of Times Square in New York. It came to be known as that because of the location of the New York Times office, adjacent to Times Square. I never even thought about it.